Americans United - Antichristhttps://www.au.org/tags/antichrist
enBeastie Boys: Virginia House Passes Bill To Ward Off Antichrist https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/beastie-boys-virginia-house-passes-bill-to-ward-off-antichrist
<a href="/about/people/joseph-l-conn">Joseph L. Conn</a><div class="field field-name-field-blog-type field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/blogs/wall-of-separation">Wall of Separation</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-callout field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">The Virginia House of Delegates has just passed a bill that supporters hope will keep the Antichrist at bay.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="prose"><p>You can’t make this stuff up.</p>
<p>The Virginia House of Delegates has just passed a bill that supporters hope will keep the Antichrist at bay.</p>
<p>You hear a loud whirring noise, you say? That would be Thomas Jefferson and James Madison spinning like tops in their Virginia graves.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s true. Yesterday House members <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/02/10/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry6195506.shtml">approved a measure</a> that would prohibit employers and insurance companies from requiring people to implant microchips in their bodies.</p>
<p>I’ll have to admit that I wouldn’t want that to happen. But frankly I didn’t know there was much of a move afoot to do something like that.</p>
<p>As it turns out, there isn’t. But, according to <em>The Washington Post</em>, there are some fundamentalist Christians out there whose analysis of end-times biblical prophecy leads them to believe that the Antichrist will appear soon and force everyone to accept the “mark of the Beast” in their persons. That “mark,” they think, could easily be the microchip.</p>
<p><em>The Post</em> <a href="//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/09/AR2010020903796.html">reports</a> that Del. Mark L. Cole (R –Fredericksburg), the bill's sponsor, has both privacy and religious concerns. He thinks the microchips could someday be used as the “mark of the beast” described in the Book of Revelation.</p>
<p>“My understanding – and I’m not a theologian – but there’s a prophecy in the Bible that says you'll have to receive a mark, or you can neither buy nor sell things in end times,” Cole told <em>The Post</em>. “Some people think these computer chips might be that mark.”</p>
<p>Okaaay.</p>
<p>So let me get this straight: the Antichrist – the personification of Evil itself – is going to show up in America and start imposing the mark of Beast. He rolls through states such California, Kansas and Delaware, but when he gets to the Virginia line, he and his legions of demons just have to stop dead in their sulfurous tracks.</p>
<p>“Sorry, boys,” he’ll say. “Virginia’s got a law that says we can’t mess with the good folks there.”</p>
<p>You know, I’m not sure I buy it.</p>
<p>Far be it from me, however, to make fun of anyone else’s sincerely held religious beliefs. The Free Exercise Clause guarantees that we each can believe any darn thing we want to. I’m sure there are millions of people who think my opinions about religion are utterly ridiculous, and yet the Constitution ensures my right to hold them.</p>
<p>But there’s a difference between Virginia’s anti-Antichrist brigade and me. I’m not trying to pass legislation enacting my beliefs into law.</p>
<p>The House measure’s provisions won’t do much harm, I guess. It blocks something that almost certainly wasn’t going to happen any way. But focusing on things like this diverts legislative attention from pressing matters such as unemployment, education and state budgets.</p>
<p>And most importantly, it does enormous harm when legislators get the idea that it’s perfectly okay for them to enact laws based on religion.</p>
</div></div><div class="tags clearfix"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><span class="field-item"><a href="/tags/antichrist">Antichrist</a></span>, <span class="field-item"><a href="/tags/mark-l-cole">Mark L. Cole</a></span>, <span class="field-item"><a href="/tags/mark-beast">Mark of the Beast</a></span>, <span class="field-item"><a href="/tags/microchips">microchips</a></span>, <span class="field-item"><a href="/tags/virginia">virginia</a></span>, <span class="field-item"><a href="/tags/virginia-house-delegates">Virginia House of Delegates</a></span></div></div>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:29:30 +0000Joseph L. Conn1585 at https://www.au.orghttps://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/beastie-boys-virginia-house-passes-bill-to-ward-off-antichrist#commentsHoly-War Fever: Radical Rhetoric Stokes Flames Of Right-Wing Paranoiahttps://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/holy-war-fever-radical-rhetoric-stokes-flames-of-right-wing-paranoia
<a href="/about/people/joseph-l-conn">Joseph L. Conn</a><div class="field field-name-field-blog-type field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/blogs/wall-of-separation">Wall of Separation</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-callout field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">It&#039;s hard to see all the shrill and unreasoned rhetoric bandied about by the Religious Right, the &#039;birthers&#039; and the &#039;tea party&#039; crowd and not be deeply concerned about where our democracy is headed.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="prose"><p>Is America on the verge of a holy war?</p>
<p>One writer seems to think so. In a provocative <em>Esquire</em> <a href="http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richardson-report/obama-fascist-081809">article,</a> John H. Richardson detects an increasingly radical – and potentially violent – stream of religious-political activism afoot in the United States.</p>
<p>Says Richardson, "Over the last few years, it has become increasingly clear to me that what we are witnessing is nothing less than the birth of a new religion. Cobbled together from old parts (fundamentalism, gun rights, excessive reverence for capitalism and The Founders, paranoid talking points from the good old liberal-hating John Birch Society, this new decidedly American religion has finally achieved critical mass under the pressure of a president whom its most extreme adherents call — by no accident — the Antichrist."</p>
<p>Richardson focuses on an eighth-grade public school teacher in Oklahoma City whose views are troubling to say the least. Mike Austin is popular with students, seems to be a great teacher and bakes bread for the principal who serves as his supervisor.</p>
<p>But, according to this profile, he has called President Obama "evil" and "malignant," and he believes that America is "rapidly becoming a Socialist dictatorship."</p>
<p>In Austin's blog posts, he rails against liberals who are allegedly trying to disarm Americans, charges that Obama is on a "Marxist crusade" to turn the country into a "socialist dependency" and warns that president wants to "allow sodomites in the military." He's reading a book called the <em>The 5000 Year Leap </em>(celebrated by Glenn Beck) that says American freedoms are all based on Christian morality and the Constitution doesn't mandate church-state separation.</p>
<p>Austin owns two guns and has a concealed-carry permit, but says he doesn't want to use either weapon. Still, on his blog, he notes, "We are going to learn whether it is true that 'all power flows from the barrel of a gun.'"</p>
<p>Is the <em>Esquire</em> article unduly alarmist?</p>
<p>It's hard to say. But it's also hard to see all the shrill and unreasoned rhetoric bandied about by the Religious Right, the "birthers" and the "tea party" crowd and not be deeply concerned about where our democracy is headed.</p>
</div></div><div class="tags clearfix"><div class="field-label">Issues:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><span class="field-item"><a href="/issues/fighting-religious-right">Fighting the Religious Right</a></span></div></div><div class="tags clearfix"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><span class="field-item"><a href="/tags/antichrist">Antichrist</a></span>, <span class="field-item"><a href="/tags/barack-obama">Barack Obama</a></span>, <span class="field-item"><a href="/tags/birthers">birthers</a></span>, <span class="field-item"><a href="/tags/glenn-beck">Glenn Beck</a></span>, <span class="field-item"><a href="/tags/holy-war">holy war</a></span>, <span class="field-item"><a href="/tags/john-birch-society">John Birch Society</a></span>, <span class="field-item"><a href="/tags/religious-right-0">Religious Right</a></span>, <span class="field-item"><a href="/tags/tea-party">tea party</a></span>, <span class="field-item"><a href="/tags/5000-year-leap">The 5000 Year Leap</a></span></div></div>Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:53:22 +0000Joseph L. Conn1577 at https://www.au.orghttps://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/holy-war-fever-radical-rhetoric-stokes-flames-of-right-wing-paranoia#comments